David McNicoll aggregated collection of papers

fonds

1894-2000

Textual Records, Graphic Materials, Photographs, Drawings, Nonmusical Sound Recordings, Objects

9660969

3.08 metres of textual material (14 boxes, 3 outsize boxes, 4 folders, 1 outsize folder)
1 object

David Ramsay McNicoll (1914-2000), journalist, was born in Geelong and educated at Scotch College, Melbourne. He became a cadet with The Sydney Morning Herald in 1933. During his father, Brigadier-General Sir Walter McNicoll's term as administrator of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, he covered the Governor-General Lord Gowrie's visit there in 1937. In 1940 McNicoll enlisted in the 2nd AIF and served in the 7th Division in the Middle East. His collection of verse and other writings, Air Mail Palestine, was published in 1943. The following year he took up an invitation from Frank Packer to cover the D Day landing at Normandy for Australian Consolidated Press. McNicoll was accredited to General George Patton's 3rd U.S. Army as it swept across France to liberate Paris.

After the war, McNicoll took on assignments at home and abroad: he interviewed the Argentine leader, Juan Peron, in 1945, and Nelson Mandela in Robben Island prison in 1973; he started the 'Town Talk' column in the Sydney Daily Telegraph in 1946, the first regular front-page column to appear in an Australian newspaper; and he covered the Royal wedding in 1947 and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth six years later. He was Editor-in-Chief, and a Director from 1960, of Australian Consolidated Press from 1953 until his retirement in 1972. He continued his association with ACP by becoming a weekly columnist and editorial consultant with The Bulletin. McNicoll was moderator of the first 'Meet the Press' programme on Australian television in the 1960s. He published his autobiography, Luck's a Fortune, in 1979.

A founding member of the Australian Press Council in 1976, McNicoll received its inaugural medal in 2000 for his lifetime of achievement in the print media. He had been awarded the CBE in 1969 for services to journalism and the Legion of Honour by the French Government in 1996.

David McNicoll married, in 1938, Jean Morison ('Micky') McCay, daughter of the journalist Delamore McCay, who predeceased him in 1983.

COLLECTION 1:
David McNicollpapers, 1894-2000

COLLECTION: 2
David McNicoll further papers, 1946-1951